HM Government E-petitions was developed by Unboxed Consulting as part of the Agile Delivery Network (ADN ) and provided the majority of the team. With the full site launch on 5 Aug and rioting starting on 7 Aug, there were a few glitches due to the vast number of people accessing the site which have now been resolved.

2160 petitions are currently active with sometimes directly opposing views of UK citizens such as 25,646 supporting the petition to retain the ban on capital punishment and 17,856 who want to restore capital punishment. E-petitions are rejected if they are libelous, include swearing or are unclear.

The Agile Delivery Network is a select group of small UK companies specialising in Agile software delivery. It claims to have recently raised awareness that Government should use experienced Agile consultants from the SME community to address Agile development raised in the report System Error: Fixing the flaws in government IT.

Through this, Unboxed Consulting, as an experienced web developer, won the opportunity with other members of the ADN to develop the e-petitions site.

Commons Leader Sir George Young (right) said the e-petitions site was a ‘step towards a more accessible and transparent’ Parliament and campaigns backed by 100,000 signatures would trigger consideration for debate in Parliament. However he suggested that the threshold could be lifted if too many petitions reached that figure.

Andy de Vale, co-founder of the Agile Delivery Network said: ‘The e-petitions site launch should be considered a milestone for Government, and a bigger one for the UK taxpayer as it demonstrates an unprecedented Government IT delivery capability.

Through collaboration between Agile Delivery Network SMEs and the team at Government Digital Service, a national, high volume application built to high quality standards was delivered in less time than it would take traditional suppliers to provide a pilot.’

Maybe with time it will acquire some of Avaaz pizazz! Meantime will Scotland get its own petition site too?